10 Best Spaceships In The Doctor Who Universe

6. The Chula Ambulance

Doctor Who The Empty Child Chula ambulance
BBC

While it might not be the biggest or most visually-interesting ship in Doctor Who, the Chula (pronounced "chew-la") ambulance from Series 1's The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances deserves a ton of brownie points based on its abilities alone.

That first episode begins with the Ninth Doctor and Rose speeding through the time vortex, chasing an unidentified spacecraft down to 1940s Earth. Initially, it's not clear why this ship has landed there, or what it even is, but by the end of the story - and after a couple of gas mask zombie attacks - all is revealed.

While Captain Jack Harkness believes it to be nothing more than space junk, this ship is actually a Chula ambulance, a medical ship used by the Chula to heal their warriors. The nanogenes stored within this ship are incredibly potent, not only capable of healing any injury in the world, but also capable of resurrecting deceased individuals. In addition, the Chula use these nanogenes to prepare their soldiers for combat, augmenting their strength and getting them in prime physical shape.

In the wrong hands - the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans - just a single one of these ambulances could have devastating consequences for the universe, placing this ship among the most powerful spacecraft in the show.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!